


Under the killing moon

by Trash



Category: Linkin Park
Genre: Abortion, Gore, Horror, Kidnapping, M/M, Mpreg, Torture, Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-31
Updated: 2014-01-31
Packaged: 2018-01-10 17:13:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1162363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash/pseuds/Trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're all different; humans, vampires and werewolves. But capture, it seems, makes everybody equal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A lifetime ago, with frozen eyes they closed the door. Suddenly, I realise what locks are for.

The sides of the container are smeared with so much blood and shit and dirty finger prints that looking out is like looking through fog. Still, Chester can see them moving about around him; he can see the other containers and cages. Some of the people in them, they haven’t moved for days. The only reason they aren’t already maggot-ridden is because the containers are air tight except for some tiny holes drilled into the top.

He’s been here so long he can’t imagine what the sun looks like anymore. The moon is a memory that he sees when he dreams and thinks of running through open fields, his feet beating down muddy paths towards humanity. He imagines his fangs tearing out somebody’s throat and the feeling of their blood raining down on him, hot and metallic. His fur was never completely clean and served as a warning to others stupid enough to fight him.

Now he’s all skin. To look at, he could be any other human. At first he felt chronically uncomfortable, but then they dumped a vampire in the container next to him and he realised that this, not being able to run free or see the moon, it was nothing.

All around him vampires are aging. Every day, the container beside him is opened and the vampire dragged out. Chester has no idea what they do to him, but when they bring him back he trembles uncontrollably. For the first few days he fought them, but now he just lets them drag his tired body around. Like a slave.

And Chester supposes he’s not really any different.

None of them are.

Capture, it seems, makes everybody equal.

***

Brad sits in bed reading because he’s a boring motherfucker. Chester remembers a time when they used to go out partying every night. But, you know, all good things come to an end. He looks up at Chester standing in the bedroom doorway. “It’s a full moon,” he says.

Chester nods and glances out the window. “I know.”

“You should stay.”

“Then it’ll be you who gets hurt, Brad. You know how this thing works.”

“Fine,” Brad mutters, looking back down at his book, “then you can burn your own damn clothes in the morning.”

There’s nothing else to say, but Chester still has an apology ready on the end of his tongue. It used to be that Brad supported him, even if it was only because there was nothing else he could do. Now they could be strangers living in the same house, and Chester hates himself for letting things get this way.

But he still leaves.

He runs as far as he can away from their home, thundering along side roads until it happens. The change. The agony and knowing he’ll go through it all over again when the sun rises. He collapses behind a dumpster and lets it happen.

After years of this, after dragging Brad from town to town, state to state when people started asking questions. After years of the pain, the exhaustion, Chester knows how to suffer in silence.

Somewhere down the alley a door opens and Chester creeps forward. His thoughts as a wolf are different: they’re simpler. And he knows it’s either kill or be killed. And as he sneaks up on his prey, his paws making no sound as he creep forward, he feels something sharp pierce his neck and howls.

That’s when the net comes down on him. He lashes out with his claws and gnaws at the net with his teeth, snapping frantically. But he can’t get free, and his movements are sluggish. His entire body feels heavy, and eventually he collapses.

And they drag him away.

***

Chester jerks awake, panting heavily. He doesn’t notice the face pressed against the Perspex of his container straight away, but when he does he dives forward, slamming his entire body against the side angrily.

The man doesn’t move, cocks his head to the side and smiles placidly. “Good morning,” he says.

Chester glares at him, baring his teeth furiously.

“Time to go,” The man says, and glances over his shoulder. A group of people in white coats step forward from the gloom, stepping closer to Chester’s container. He doesn’t mean to, but he cowers back in the corner. He watches as they unlock the door and pull it open, gathering around so that he can’t escape.

“You might as well come out,” A woman says, brandishing a tranquiliser gun. “It’ll only hurt you.”

Sometimes the bravest thing to do is nothing.

Chester remains completely still, watching her every move. Eventually she leans in as far as she can and, even when Chester squirms away, manages to stab him in the neck with the gun.

And within seconds his body goes limp, and he can’t do anything as they pull him from the container. They strap him onto a gurney and wheel him along between the cages. With his head held firmly in place Chester can’t do anything but drowsily watch the strip lights overhead as he passes beneath them.

***

“We have to leave.”

“Again? Chester, you promised you’d be more careful.”

“Don’t do this to me, Brad. Don’t make this harder for me.”

“Fine. Then we leave.”

***

The room has an operating table in the centre, stainless steel counters and sinks around the outside. Over the table is an adjustable light which blinds him as they lift his body onto it. The cold makes the hair on his arms stand up but he can’t even shiver.

A face looms over his, mostly hidden behind a surgeon’s mask and cap. He wants to ask him what’s going on, why is he here? Why are any of them here? But he can’t move his lips and his tongue feels like a dead thing in his mouth. He looks around, dazed. The lights are too bright, making everything else the way things look after you stare at the sun, tiny black spots filling his vision.

Chester watches helplessly as the doctors strap him down, securing his arms and legs to the table. A tourniquet is fastened around his bicep until his veins pop, thick and blue in the crook of his elbow. He doesn’t feel the pain when they inject him, but he still grits his teeth. Fear grips him, tightening around his heart like a fist.

Nothing is said but the doctors back off. Chester tilts his head enough so he can see them standing around the sides of the room, watching him. They just stand there, watching, and Chester starts to wonder what the fuck they’re waiting for but then he feels all of the blood in his body rush to his groin and he wonders just what the hell they injected him with.

This whole situation is the opposite of sexy, but he can’t control his body. He slams his fists into the table, desperately trying to free himself from the thick restraints.

Someone behind him says, “Can’t we sedate him?”

And the woman who dragged him from his container snaps, “No” but doesn’t offer an explanation.

Chester continues to thrash against the restraints when the door bursts open and another gurney is wheeled in with a grey looking vampire strapped to it. Chester stops moving and watches the doctors hover over the gurney. Four of them turn and leave, returning with something that takes them all to carry.

It almost looks like stocks. And Chester watches as they place it on the floor of the room and pick the vampire off the gurney, dragging him towards it. He barely fights as they lay him down on it, chaining down his arms above his head. They pull him so his ass rests on the very edge then bend his legs up to expose him completely, locking them in the stocks, bent at the knee.

This is beyond degrading, so Chester looks away. He locks eyes with a young girl leaning against the counter who pales and looks away, watching whatever they are doing to the other captive.

The door opens once more and two burly men step inside, walking straight over to the operating table at one of the doctor’s command. They unfasten Chester’s restraints and try to grab him but Chester coils away, lashing out hard with his arms and legs. One of them men smacks him across the face with his open hand, splitting Chester’s lip. The taste of blood drives him insane, and for a second he is distracted enough for them to grab him and drag him over to the vampire in the stocks.

They drag him forward and push him toward the stocks. He fights as hard as he can, but they still manage to jam his hands into two smaller holes near the vampire’s legs, keeping him upright. They then chain his thighs to the bottom of the device, meaning he is trapped kneeling in place, with the vampire spread out beneath him.

A doctor steps forward and kneels beside them. With one latex glove covered hand he grabs Chester’s erection and tugs him forward. Chester growls in discomfort and moves his hips forward to ease the pain and realises, then, just what the fuck is going on.

“No!” He hisses, squirming away. “Don’t touch me. Fuck you!”

But one of the burly men, the ones in black with muscles Chester couldn’t compete with even as a wolf, they drop to their knees behind him and grab his hips, slamming him forward into the body beneath him. The vampire howls in pain and tries to move away, completely immobilised by the stocks.

The man’s grip on Chester’s hips is enough to bruise, and he yanks him back until he has withdrawn and then pushes him forward again. Each time the vampire cries out in agony and tears roll down Chester’s cheeks and drip off the end of his nose. The only reason it isn’t hard to thrust anymore is because there’s so much blood.

Chester can’t help himself. The drugs keep him hard and he feels himself getting close and he thinks, fuck, my body is betraying me. He looks down at the man beneath him, sobbing and trying to pull away, and tries desperately to hold back but he can’t. He comes with a grimace and closes his eyes tightly so he doesn’t have to look into any of the judging faces around him.

As soon as it is over he is sedated again and unchained, his wrists un-cuffed from the stocks. He watches through the fog of the sedative as they un-cuff the vampire and lift him carefully back onto the gurney. He is restrained and wheeled away through a door Chester didn’t notice before, at the back of the room.

He watches until the door swings closed behind them then something hard hits him across the head.

And the world goes dark.

***

“I love you.”

“You shouldn’t, Brad. You’ll get hurt.”

***

The rain falls lightly, cooling his skin and slicking his hair to his head. Curling further into a ball, Chester wraps his arms around himself to keep warm.

And then he realises.

He starts, jumping to his feet. He staggers a couple of paces, catching himself on a brick wall and he glances around, confused and scared. This alley, he’s been here before. But not as himself. Maybe this is just déjà vu. Or maybe he changed here.

And then it dawns on him.

They picked him up here. This is where he was attacked. He looks down at himself, staring blankly at the dirty hospital gown his body is wrapped in. It’s dark already, so maybe it’s late. Maybe nobody will notice if he runs home like this.

Broken glass and gravel shred the bottom of his feet but he keeps running, his heart pounding in his chest with terror and confusion. There are no cars or people around to see him so he keeps running, not looking before racing across the empty roads towards the home he shares with Brad.

He hops over the low wall surrounding the garden and up the path, pounding on the door with his fist. Nobody answers for a long time so he tries again, frantically ringing the bell and praying. Eventually the door opens and a sleepy looking Brad appears, his eyes widening at the sight in front of him. “Ches,” he whispers in awe.

Chester doesn’t realise he is crying until Brad steps out into the rain and wipes his eyes for him, pulling him close.

“I thought you’d been killed. Nobody knew where you were…”

And Chester knows he has to explain, but he can’t even form the words. And they just stand in the rain in each other’s arms, both of them crying and scared.

***

Brad insists that Chester should go to the hospital, the police, a therapist, anything. But going to the police would be pointless seeing as Chester has no recollection of how he got there or who kidnapped him. And going to the hospital would just be stupid. Most humans may not actively hunt werewolves but if one walked up to them they’d probably have it shot.

So Chester doesn’t do anything. He suffers through the nightmares, and refuses to sleep in any room with the door closed. Brad stands by and watches unhappily, but doesn’t protest.

Sometimes the bravest thing to do is nothing.

The day of the full moon Chester drives to a town he’s never been to before and stays in a motel. This is how things go now. Brad doesn’t volunteer to come with, so Chester doesn’t ask him. It’s safer this way anyway, being alone.

The town is small and there’s the distinct feeling of everything moving in slow motion. This kind of town, everybody knows everybody else and nobody leaves. There’s unrest here, though. And eventually Chester notices the missing person posters plastered in every store window and stapled to every telephone pole.

The photo is black and white but for sure this girl is a vampire. Probably, she was in a cage in that warehouse. Now, though, she’s probably dead.

He walks down a leafy avenue looking for a liquor store. There’s nowhere to drive and the motel smells like death and he’d rather be out than sitting still. He digs his hands deep into his pockets and watches his feet as he walks. He wonders if every werewolf is this lonely. For sure there aren’t many of them, and with vampires killing or turning all the humans it’s tough competition so a lot of them die.

At least he has Brad. He complains a lot but would still follow Chester wherever he had to go. Chester wonders if Brad ever gets lonely, if he wishes he’d fallen for a human instead of a monster.

He doesn’t see the other man until they collide, and only after he has apologised does Chester look up with a polite smile.

Which fades.

Because.

Fuck.

It’s the vampire from the warehouse. The one they locked in the stocks. The one they made Chester fuck.

The stand there staring at each other for a long time. Eventually the vampire turns and starts to walk away, his feet kicking up the fallen leaves as he picks up speed. Chester hesitates then runs after him, “Wait!”

The vampire slows down but keeps walking, allowing Chester to walk beside him. “What’s your name?” Chester asks.

The vampire looks at him through a curtain of shoulder length, dark hair. His eyes are as black as night but he looks scared. His voice is timid when he says, “Rob.”

“Rob. Okay. I’m Chester.”

Rob nods and looks down at his feet, watching them. “They let you go.”

“Yeah,” Chester says, “I guess so. Um…what they made me do to you…I’m so sorry. I don’t…they drugged me…and I just couldn’t…”

“Don’t.” Rob snaps. “I know it wasn’t your fault.”

“Oh. So. What…why were they doing that? How did you get out? Are you okay?”

“I don’t want to talk about this here.” Rob says, stopping still and turning to look at Chester. “I don’t want to talk about this, period. But they were breeding us. That’s what they were doing. And they thought I couldn’t get pregnant so they beat me senseless then left me somewhere to die. But look at me,” he reaches down and tugs his shirt up, exposing his swollen stomach, “look at this and tell me I’m not pregnant.”

Chester pales, staring at Rob’s stomach mesmerised. He reaches out with one hand and touches it, the skin beneath his fingers ice cold. “I did this?”

Rob pushes his hand away and pulls his shirt back down, folding his arms over his chest defensively. “Yeah,” he says, “I guess so. But if that thing inside of me is alive or not, who can tell? And what am I supposed to do about it? To answer your question, Chester; no, I am not okay.”

He goes to walk away but Chester grabs his arm and tugs him back. “I want to help you!”

“How?” Rob asks. “How can you help me?”

Chester has no idea. But he feels like standing here on some little street with houses all around them with humans just waiting to see something unusual isn’t going to inspire him. “Come home with me.”

“No.”

“I live miles from here. I have a friend; he might be able to help. I don’t know, but I owe you this at least.”

Rob shakes his head, his eyes narrowed and he tugs his arm from Chester’s grip.

“Fine. I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m staying at the Sunrise Motel and that’s where you’ll find me until noon. If you want me to help you you’ll be there. But if not…I guess I’ll see you around.”

He walks away in the opposite direction, the idea of getting drunk entirely erased from his mind, his stomach churning. He passes out when he gets back to the motel, and dreams of vampires crossed with werewolves and wakes up to the sound of something howling at the moon.


	2. Empty the stare; innocent and unaware. Dragged out from my home, my lair.

The next morning, he crawls back to the motel as the sun rises and showers until his skin is boiled pink and he can no longer smell blood. He can’t shake the feeling of guilt that has haunted him since he met Rob. It’s an eerie feeling, almost like loneliness. He doesn’t want to be the only one who knows about this.

He didn’t tell Brad about what happened, about the stocks or the rape or anything. He made out like they got bored of him and let him go. How could he tell anybody about this? Brad has enough on his plate, and probably he already regrets ever meeting Chester. This has been his big secret up until now. And he feels like it’s going to swallow him whole.

He throws his bag onto the backseat of his car and heads back along to the reception area to hand his key in. When he returns, Rob is there, leaning against the passenger door. His sunglasses hide his expression, but he looks nervous. “Hello,” he says.

“Morning.” Chester smiles, warily. He steps closer to the car, digging the keys out of his pocket. “I thought vampires hated the sun.”

“Shows how much you know then, doesn’t it?”

Rob says nothing else, climbing into the passenger seat and sitting there in silence for the entire journey. Chester wants to make conversation even though it’d be pointless; he wants Rob to know that things will be okay. But the words never come, and by the time he plucks up the courage to speak they’re already home and he decides to save his breath.

The sun hasn’t set yet, but it’s on its way down and they both look to the sky as they head toward the house. Brad doesn’t answer right away but when he does Chester’s breath catches in his throat. He looks stunning; wearing a smart black shirt with the black jeans Chester always tries to make him wear because they make his ass look amazing. He has done his hair and trimmed his beard because he knows Chester hates it when it’s long.

And he smiles warmly. “I made you dinner,” he says and looks vulnerable, like Chester might throw this in his face.

He has forgotten about Rob entirely. All of his fears of Brad rejecting him have disappeared and his heart swells. He laughs and says, “You’re going to make me into one of the sappy werewolves, aren’t you?”

Brad smiles and leans in to kiss him softly, faltering when he pulls away. His expression goes from calm to scared in a second, and Chester glances over his shoulder at Rob who has stepped forward from the shadows.

Too late to back down now, he supposes. “I have something to tell you.”

***

Brad isn’t angry the way Chester had expected. Instead, he seems disappointed. He offers Rob food with a polite smile but his eyes are sad and Chester feels like such a fucking jerk. He takes a rose from the vase that sits in the centre of the table Brad set for dinner and twirls it between his fingers. “I don’t even know if you can help,” he says, “but maybe. I don’t know. This is my fault and I couldn’t just – ”

“Don’t, Chester.” Brad says, not looking at him.

Rob runs his finger around the edge of the crystal champagne flute in front of him making an eerie, high-pitched sound. Eventually, Chester reaches out and grabs his wrist, pulling it away from the glass.

“Can’t you just go to the hospital?” Brad asks, finally taking a seat at the opposite end of the dining table. “What do you expect me to do here?”

Chester shrugs. “I thought you had a friend in med school? Or did he graduate? I don’t remember.”

“Yeah, he graduated. But I’m not dragging him into this.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s so risky. What if he just turns you both in? That’s what I should have done. But I never did, and ever since I feel like I can’t trust anybody I work with.”

Chester flushes angrily, “Don’t be such a dick, Brad. You should have turned me in? Go ahead man, fucking do it. Do whatever. You’re either going to help us or you’re not.”

“I’m not.”

“Fine.” Chester says, getting to his feet and nodding to Rob. “Come on,” he says, “we’ll find someone else. There’s plenty abortionists who’d do this if we paid them.”

Brad follows them to the door, gritting his teeth. “Don’t walk out that door, Chester,” he snaps.

Chester turns and stares him down defiantly. “Or what? You’ll call animal control? Give me a break, Brad. I was only asking for your help.”

“That’s not all you’re asking me for. You want me to keep this all a secret. Those breeders, all those trapped people.”

“I’ve already said do whatever you like. Call the cops and report it if you like, but they’ll only hunt me down if they find out about it. They’ll hunt us.”

“You and Rob.”

“No,” Chester says. “They’ll hunt you and me. Because now you’re as bad as one of us. You’re no different, so don’t pretend otherwise.”

Brad shakes his head and looks down the path to where Rob is standing, staring at the fiery sunset in the distance. “Don’t go with him.” He says.

“Or what?”

There’s silence for a long time. They stand close, Brad’s breath ghosting across Chester’s face.

“Or nothing.” Brad says, stepping back into the house. He locks the door, and Chester hears him slide the chain across.

***

Backyard abortions are a dime a dozen in Los Angeles. They drive for an hour out of town, far enough away that nobody would recognise either of them later. Chester spots a group of hookers on a street corner and pulls over, rolling down his window.

“Hey sugar,” one of them says. “Looking for a good time?” She leans in and presses her tits to the car window, fifty bucks jammed between them.

“I’m actually looking for an abortion clinic.”

Her face goes blank for a second but then she smirks and smacks her gum, licks her lips, “You mean like Planned Parenthood? Or are you a coat hanger kind of guy?”

Chester cringes at the mental image of some shady man on his hands and knees straightening out a coat hanger and stabbing it blindly into some teenager’s uterus.

“Not Planned Parenthood.” He says and she nods, resting her weight on the car door.

“Well, there’s this guy who charges fifty bucks for the whole whammy, you know? I don’t know his name on account of he don’t tell no-one in case the cops find him, you know?” She shifts her weight and smacks her gum. “I figure if you give me some money I can tell you.”

Rob shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Chester spares him a worried glance and reaches out to squeeze his hand reassuringly.

“How much?” He asks.

***

The hooker’s directions seem bogus at first, and Chester thinks this has to be the worst fifty dollars he has ever wasted. The neighbourhood seems about right, but none of the houses seem to have been lived in for at least a decade, with rotten wood boards nailed over the windows and doors.

He climbs out of the car, leaving Rob behind, and walks up to the rusty gate of number three hundred and ten and kicks it open. As he approaches the house the front door opens and a man steps out onto the porch. He looks Chester up and down, sizing him up, then crosses his arms over his chest. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah,” Chester says, knowing he shouldn’t be scared. He glances back at Rob sitting in the car. “Yeah, I hope so. I was given your address by a girl. Um. Chardonnay.”

“Yeah, I know her,” the man says, still looking suspicious. “So where’s the chick you need fixing.”

“It’s um. It’s actually a guy.”

The man raises an eyebrow and goes to laugh, but Rob, he’s already heading up the path, hands pressed to his swollen stomach. And the man goes pale.

“I’ll pay you more if you don’t ask any questions,” Chester says, “and just do your job.”

The man nods after a second and leads them inside, locking the door behind them. He leads them upstairs in the dark and along a hallway with a bathroom at the end. He flicks on a light to illuminate the room. Chester squeezes his eyes closed against the brightness and when he opens them black spots swim across his vision.

Rob stands frozen still and stares around. The entire room is covered with dirty, white tiles with mould creeping up the grout in between. There’s a low sided tub in the corner and opposite is a long, metal counter with a dirty sink at one end. Chester meets his gaze and worries his lower lip between his teeth.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says quietly, taking Rob’s hand in his.

The vampire snatches his hand away and shakes his head, “Yeah. But I’m going to.”

Chester sighs but nods. What’s the worst that could happen, he supposes. Vampires are immortal, so surely this won’t kill Rob. Although a close inspection of the surgical tools on a tray by the bathtub doesn’t exactly reassure either of them.

“Does he get an anaesthetic?”

The guy shrugs, says, “I could knock him out,” and cracks his knuckles.

Chester shakes his head and smiles warily. “No it’s uh, it’s fine. It’ll be fine.”

“Your choice.” He glances at Rob and says, “Strip.” And he does, pulling off his t-shirt and throwing it at Chester. His jeans follow, along with his socks and shoes until he’s standing in nothing but his black boxers, arms folded self-consciously over his chest.

The man gestures for him to climb in the tub. Rob glances at Chester, but his expression is unreadable. He steps into the tub carefully and lays down. He shivers as his skin comes into contact with the cold porcelain.

“You sure you don’t want me to knock you out?”

“Can we just get on with it?” Rob snaps, staring hard at the ceiling.

The man shrugs and snaps on some disposable latex gloves which probably should have been disposed of a few procedures ago and grabs a knife. It’s too big to be a scalpel, but it isn’t something you’d find in your cutlery drawer, either. He doesn’t hesitate before plunging it into the pale skin of Rob’s stomach, dragging it along. There’s resistance and he has to pull hard.

Chester can barely watch as Rob’s eyes roll into the back of his head in agony. He doesn’t utter a word, but his teeth have chewed through his lip so hard there’s blood streaming down either side of his mouth. He looks more like a vampire than Chester has ever seen.

The skin parts fairly easily now, blood spreading from the wound to stain the tub like rust. Chester can’t turn away as the man clamps the wound open the way he’s seen on the hospital dramas Brad watches every Saturday. Neither he nor Rob are prepared for when the guy plunges his hand into the wound, grabbing something with one hand and hacking at it with a knife.

Rob cries out, his voice bloodcurdling and making Chester sick to his stomach. He writhes in the tub, his blood spreading and making him slip easily. The man, he hisses and snaps at Chester, “Hold him the fuck still. I’m not having no one die on me. Die in the street, not here.”

Chester reaches into the tub, feeling like he’s going to vomit or pass out. He grips Rob by the shoulders, pressing his upper body down into the tub and staring into his eyes. “Hold still. Don’t do this. Neither of us know if this will kill you. So hold still. It’ll be over soon.”

Rob soon loses consciousness, which is probably a good thing: a second later, the guy tears out something covered in blood and some kind of mucus, throwing it into the basin. Chester straightens up, unable to watch him root around to make sure it’s all out or watch him stitch Rob back up.

In the basin is the body of a baby, none of its limbs fully formed and its body smaller than the palm of Chester’s hand. From its stomach stretches the disgusting length of the umbilical cord, and closer inspection shows that it’s a boy.

He has a son.

Or, had.

Whatever.

Didn’t have, ever, because this isn’t the kind of family he wants.

What he wants is to settle down with Brad. Things hadn’t been going horribly, but he can’t see them ever being good again now. Until he was bitten he hadn’t worried about anybody loving him – it just hadn’t mattered to him at all – but now it killed him to think that his being a werewolf would rot his relationship from the inside.

He wants things to be different.

He wants thing to not be like this.

He tears his eyes away from the baby in the basin and looks back at Rob as the man wraps his lower abdomen in thick bandages. “He’s going to be in a fuck load of pain,” he says, “so don’t expect him to be up for much, you know what I mean?”

Chester nods dumbly and pulls out the money from his pocket, holding it out. The man takes it and gets to his feet with a groan, his knees popping. “When he comes to, just see yourselves out. And if you call the cops, I’ll find you and kill you, you get it?”

Chester just nods again, not even listening. He stares at Rob’s body in the tub, feeling his knees go weak. How can he face him after this? This is all his fault. He folds up Rob’s clothes carefully and places them on the counter beside the basin for him to find when he wakes up. Without a word, he slips from the room.

He nearly falls down the stairs on his way to the front door and once he gets outside he falls to his knees, throwing up in the grass.

***

When Rob staggers out of the front door maybe an hour later, with his arms clutching at his stomach, he spots Chester sitting in his car staring straight ahead. He hobbles around to the passenger side and climbs in, and wordlessly Chester pulls the car away from the kerb.

***

“God, Chester, you’re covered in blood! What the fuck happened? Were you mugged?”

“It’s not my blood.”

“What? Right, I’m taking you to hospital, you look terrible. I fucking knew letting you go there was a bad idea.” Brad mutters to himself, grabbing his jacket and pulling it on quickly, fumbling with the zip.

“Brad, just - stop, okay?” Chester says, putting a hand on his arm reassuringly.

“No. Tell me what happened. Tell me. Because I feel like - God, I shouldn’t have let you go there. We both know it’s a hot spot for vampires and other freaks.”

Chester drops his hand, drops his head, stares at his feet. “They’re not freaks. Some of them, they’re going about their business, they’re going to work at the bar one night and they get jumped. Some of them, they were completely normal human beings and then they got bitten and now they’re not.”

Brad looks like maybe he doesn’t understand, but then the penny drops and he backs away.

Chester can’t see much for the tears in his eyes. “Some of them just want to live as normal a life as they can but they still have urges, cravings that never ever go away.”

Shaking his head in denial, Brad just says, “No,” and backs off, hurrying upstairs. He leaves Chester there, covered in some guy’s blood, crying like a baby.

***

“You’re going to go back to him.” Rob says quietly. He looks paler than usual, and like he’s in a lot of pain, but when he puts his hands under the bandage to touch the wound they don’t come back covered in blood, so maybe vampires are quicker healers than werewolves.

“To Brad, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes. I am.”

Rob nods to himself and goes back to staring straight ahead. “Okay.” He says.

Chester wants to turn this into an argument but he’s too tired. He wants this to be over more than anything. But even after he takes Rob home and returns to Brad, this will still haunt him for a very long time. Longer than any of this prey have in the past.

There’s not another car on the road, let alone any cops, which means Chester does a hundred pretty much the entire way, reducing the time they have to sit side-by-side to a minimum. Rob tells him to go back to where they met, that town with the shit hole motel.

“Do you live there?”

“Something like that,” Rob says, not feeling the need to explain himself any further.

Chester pulls onto the avenue they met on, the set-back houses with their pristine lawns all shrouded in darkness, no lights on inside. Everybody is asleep and unaware and so very fucking ignorant of the world outside. Rob practically jumps from the car the second it stops, but Chester reaches out quick, grabbing his wrist.

“You’ll be okay, right?”

“Yes. So will you,” He says.

“Maybe.”

Rob tugs his hand away, leaning into the car to look Chester in the eye. “You’re not one of them, Chester, so don’t act like you are. Brad’s nightmares don’t even begin to compare to the things either of us have seen.”

“I’m not going to leave him.”

“Okay,” Rob says. “But you should.”

He straightens up with a wince and slams the car door. Chester watches as he digs his hands into his pockets and disappears around the corner, blending in with the shadows. It’s late and by now Chester is so hungry. He figures surely there’s some asshole, ungrateful human roaming the streets. A robber or a rapist. Someone he can take his anger out on.

So he pulls away from the kerb slowly, driving into town.

***

Brad is asleep on the porch when he gets home, two stone-cold cups of coffee beside him. Chester creeps up silently and sits down beside his sleeping body, pressing a hand to his cheek then sweeping it up to his forehead, pushing his hair out of his face. There’s blood under his fingernails and dried black on his hands. But it’s okay.

All of it, it’s okay.

He leans in and presses his lips to Brad’s hair, kissing him and breathing him in deep. Maybe they’re not the same now, but once-upon-a-time they were. And Chester is willing to pretend that things are now the way they could have been if they’d met earlier. Maybe Brad could have saved him. Maybe it was their anniversary that night, and Brad made him call in sick so they could spend the night drinking champagne and making love.

Things could have been brilliant. But Chester will take what he can get. Which may be a life that is less than perfect, but he’s starting to think he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Brad shifts and glances up at him, squinting against the light. “Ches?”

“I’m here,” He says.

Brad nods, mumbling sleepily, “Okay. Good. I love you.”

Chester’s heart swells and he smiles with relief. “I love you too,” he says, helping Brad to sit up. And from where they sit on the porch they watch the sunrise chase away the shadows and the fear.


End file.
